The fact that Nelson was one-half of the coaching duo at least partly responsible for the worst season of TUF in recent memory (at least ratings wise), surely doesn’t increase his stock in the eyes of The Baldfather, but with “Big Country” knocking out contenders left and right, it’d be insane to let him slip through your fingers, right? Well, according to DW, Nelson’s bout with Stipe Miocic at UFC 161 this weekend may be his last in the UFC:

UFC President Dana White used the contract circumstances as a way to explain the pairing of Nelson and Miocic, which looked odd when announced five weeks ago.

The fighters were headed in different directions. Nelson had just defeated Cheick Kongo and ascended to No. 5 in the heavyweight rankings two months ago while Miocic was coming off the first loss of his career and hadn’t fought in nine months.

Slated to fight newcomer Soa Palelei on the preliminary card, Miocic found himself promoted into the Nelson bout on late notice. It was a necessary move, according to White, because of the terms of Nelson’s contract.

“He’s on the last fight of his deal and we owe him a fight,” White said. “He’s not giving us any extensions.”

White reported that the UFC offered Nelson an extension that he turned down, prompting the boss to blast the fighter by referring to him as “the smartest guy on Earth” and “a (expletive) genius.”

From being outed for their shady drug testing policies by their current welterweight champion, to being outed for their evenshadiercontract practices by their former lightweight champion, Bellator is coming off as less a legit MMA promotion nowadays and more a venus fly trap that feeds off the desperation of its employees. With more and more fighters publicly trashing the promotion by the day, it seems as if it is only a matter of time before Bellator finds itself completely void of interest from potential clients.

And who is the latest Bellator-employed fighter to publicly disclose the promotion’s crooked business practices, you ask? That would be none other than UFC…ahem..veteran Paul Daley. If you recall, Daley has been struggling to work out some visa issues that may or may not be related to assault charges he may or may not be facing, and has thusly been unable to fight for Bellator since July of 2012. Despite the fact that “Semtex” is of no use to Bellator currently, he is still under contract with the organization, which has in turn allowed them to play ping pong with Daley’s balls. Metaphorically speaking, of course (via Daley’s Facebook):

Just got word Bellator have refused to allow me to fight yet another opponent!!! It’s becoming really frustrating that even though they are not my managers, they can approve my fights.

I’ve got great fights offered to keep me busy fighting and earning, and they seem to want to put a stop to this….all this while, having to pay for my OWN legal costs on a matter that influence my visa outcome…and my ability to fight for the promotion (Bellator) Its bullshit.

Almost immediately after said fight, the UFC made Alvarez an offer, one that Bellator had the right to match if they hoped to keep Alvarez. Since that time, Alvarez and Bellator have been locked in a battle over what the term “matched” truly means. While Bellator believes that they matched the UFC’s offer and therefore still have rights to Alvarez, their former lightweight champion disagrees. The two parties soon sued one another. Somehow, I just know that this is all Obama’s fault.

In January, a federal judge denied Alvarez’s petition to be freed from Bellator, but in April, the same judge also denied Bellator’s petition that part of Alvarez’s suit against them be dropped (Ed note: Are we having fun yet?). Though there were rumors that the two parties would eventually reach an agreement, Alvarez’s Twitter account said otherwise yesterday.

“We will be going to Trial And there will be NO settlement I want to see this thing through and Let the truth come out in the End,” the fighter tweeted.

(In the words of my life coach, “If you ask me one more fucking question about that fucking joke Eddie Alvarez, I will fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.”)

The drama continues to unfold in the Eddie Alvarez/UFC/Bellator love triangle that last saw Bjorn Rebney and Co. break go Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer on their former lightweight champion’s ass. And as Bill Shakespeare would tell you himself, no love triangle would be complete without a little dash of comedy. Enter Rebney, who recently attempted to shed some light on the convoluted goatscrew that (Bellator) negotiations oft become in a recent interview with BloodyElbow radio. When Rebney previously told reporters that he had matched the UFC’s offer on Alvarez “word for word,” the general consensus seemed to be that Rebney was simply speaking in hyperbole, for how could Bellator match the pay-per-view stipulations of the UFC’s contract when they don’t in fact broadcast pay-per-view events to begin with?

Well, it turns out that — at least according to the man himself — Rebney was not tugging our respective dicks when he said “word for word”:

I didn’t anticipate that the UFC would come in where they came in. They came in at a dollar figure in terms of the $250,000 signing bonus and the $70,000 plus $70,000 and some of the terms that we felt very comfortable matching. To avoid any questioning, to avoid any conflict, we literally took the UFC contract, took it out of a PDF format and we changed the UFC name to Bellator and we signed it and we sent it back to Ed.

Call me unrealistic, but I’d like to believe that Rebney signed his name in poo, or at least wiped his ass with the reprinted contract before sending it back to Eddie. And then when Alvarez flipped to the last page of this foul smelling document, there was a photo of Rebney, performing said act of asswhipery. Because those are the kinds of shenanigans that people who don’t give a fuck are wont to do.

(“Keep laughing, Eddie, because as soon as you lose that belt, your ass is mine.”)

Former President Clinton once made infamous the phrase, “It depends on what your definition of the word ’is’ is,” while answering questions from the Independent Counsel’s office on the all-important subject of Monica Lewinsky. With former Bellator lightweight champion/UFC hopeful Eddie Alvarez and his boss, Bjorn Rebney, the discrepancy appears to depend on what one’s definition of the word “matched” is.

It has been no secret that the UFC wants Alvarez under their banner. The top lightweight fought the last fight under his Bellator contract last October but the promotion has the right to match any contract offered to Alvarez and thus keep him with them.

The UFC did indeed recently make an offer to Alvarez, but it is here where the stories from the former champ and the Bellator CEO begin to differ.

First, Alvarez sat down with The MMA Hour and claimed that Bellator had not matched the UFC’s proposed terms. Rebney then went on MMA Weekly Radio and said that his organization had, in fact, matched the UFC’s contract offer to Alvarez, point for point.

Although we feel like we didn’t really get to know Vinny Magalhaes that well during his run on TUF 8 that took him all the way to the show’s finals, watching how he’s responded to his whole M-1 contract debacle has only endeared us to the guy all the more.

If you’re not familiar with the story, we’ll give you the gist: After winning the M-1 Light Heavyweight title back in October of 2011, Magalhaes got fed up with the promotion after they failed to offer him a single title defense under his contract, opting to attempt and resign him under a new one instead. M-1 Global Director of Operations Evgeni Kogan began a “he said/she said” contract dispute with Magalhaes that left the ADCC champion on the shelf for the rest of 2011 and all of 2012 to this point. After finally being told that he has been released from his contract, Vinny decided to put his belt up for sale on Ebay, figuring that it would at least sell for the 20 dollars worth of scrap metal it was composed of.

The bidding officially began on May 13th, and at a steal of just nine cents. It now stands at 14,600 dollars.

Many, many, many moons ago, movie makers were looking to make a sequel to the live action Masters of the Universe movie starring Dolph Lundgren, and film it in North Carolina. Auditions were held for childrens’ roles in Wilmington, and i was one of many (i assume) kids who tried out to be in a movie with He-Man. Alas, the film company had some financial difficulties and the project was scrapped; i never got another chance to be Macaulay Culkin before Macaulay Culkin. The film company had already spent something like 2 milllion dollars producing costumes and sets for the movie, and wanted to re-purpose them to recoup some of the cash they’d put up, so they banged out a script about a dystopian future of plague and anarchy, hired Jean-Claude Van Damme, and that’s how the movie Cyborg came about. All that is 100% true, by the way.